For Jess Cliffe, it's all come full circle. After co-creating Counter-Strike six years ago (and so desperately seeking community mappers at the time), Cliffe is now the mapper behind the Assault remake.

Cliffe explained that with his version of Assault he was given more freedom than the company usually allows with map ports — or even remixes. Inferno and Dust II, for example, had to maintain certain lines of sight and unit distance with their earlier versions because of their competitive use. Assault wasn't forced to adhere to these criteria, Cliffe explained, because it's a map played on public servers and at LAN parties with friends.

With his years of experience with Counter-Strike and its finest details, Jess Cliffe has a keen eye when it comes to gameplay. It shows in the Assault remake. While Assault is still Assault — and terrorists still have somewhat of an advantage — there are various changes that give the gameplay more flavor and stand to give the CTs a fighting chance.

The biggest change comes with the set of stairs that have been added on the backside of the warehouse, which lead to a second back door entrance for CTs. This change will definitely keep the terrorists on their toes. To make games more exciting, the new door's position significantly cuts down the amount of good camping spots for the terrorist team.

While I playtested the map for only a short time at Valve, I did have a good time and am looking forward to playing Assault on public servers. I don't think the map has the deep balance we'd expect from a competitive map, but the Source version of Assault is a much better experience for each team this time around.

Some more cover for CTs to prevent T rushes from being so effective would be a solid improvement over the version I played, but even without that change I suspect that the pub community will be happy to see one of its favorite maps back in action.

As for visuals, the map is on par — or exceeding — everything we've seen in CS: Source so far. The map's ambience and details were based on industrial Chicago. Known for its meat-packing district, the city perfectly communicates the setting of a run-down warehouse, according to Cliffe.

Instead of a meaningless highway to nowhere, an elevated train borders the streets of the map — a reference to Chicago's famous 'L' Train. Speaking of the streets, one small detail is that the street lights across the map are synchronized as if they were real. Small details like this are getting more and more commonplace in CS: Source maps, and it's an exciting change from the boring 1.6 offerings.

The map is scheduled to be released this week, possibly tomorrow (Wednesday), so stay tuned and enjoy the shots kindly provided by Valve!

[ad]The Future of CS: Source
Valve was very tight-lipped about Valve Anti-Cheat 2 (VAC2). Doug Lombardi did inform me that VAC2 would protect both CS: Source and CS 1.6 games, and seemed to imply that all Valve titles using Steam could easily be protected. That should come as good news for HL2 Deathmatch fans and people waiting for DoD: Source.

Lombardi also said that there is a lingering sense in the community that VAC2 is going to be a big thing and is going to catch a lot of cheaters off-guard — and he said that sense is entirely accurate. Otherwise, there was not much else in the information department — and no hint about when VAC2 would be applied to Valve's titles. Valve was almost a little too quiet about VAC2 and honestly it is a bit worrying. Hopefully, action will happen sooner rather than later.

As for more content, Jess Cliffe mentioned that Nuke was being worked on by Turtle Rock Studios along with original CS team member Chris Ashton. Cliffe said that Turtle Rock Studios would make certain that the gameplay dynamics would remain essentially unchanged. Along with Nuke, another new map made just for CS: Source was also being worked on by Dave "Driller" Riller, the creator of Port and Compound. Cliffe said that Valve would have a stronger focus on creating new, original maps after all the quality maps from 1.6 have been remade.

Doug Lombardi and I had a lengthy conversation about the future of Counter-Strike's financial setup. There were implications that things like map packs may be up for sale in the future or that a monthly fee may be considered. These ideas, truthfully, seemed very far off. Doug said internal discussions have been going on for "years" about Valve's pricing model. Eventually, he said, the company would need to become better businessmen.

Certainly if Valve were wanting to charge for anything there would have to be more in the way of content and the like. Personally, I've heard about stuff like this for years, and I doubt that CS: Source will be any different from the original Counter-Strike in terms of its level of free support. Valve seems to be leaving the door open for any financial option in the future, but I felt that they had no serious plans of charging for anything Counter-Strike in the near term.

...And Day of Defeat: Source
Day of Defeat: Source was given a late Summer release date. In early August Valve intends to start releasing some media for gamers to feast on. They then plan on releasing the game in early September. The reason for the delays? DoD:S was originally planned as a port, but — like Counter-Strike: Source — Valve decided it would be best to make the Source "port" more of a re-invention than a straight translation.